When Elon Musk decided to rebrand Twitter as X, a stupendously stupid idea even for him, the writing was on the wall. Not literally, as I seem to recall some problems with removing the Twitter signage from the HQ building, as well as that ridiculous stunt of the mega-bright giant X display on the roof. Anyhow, overnight the social network went from being one of the world’s best-known brands to X, and some months on people still refer to it as “Twitter” or, at best, “X formerly known as Twitter”.
I’m not going to get into the political leanings of Twitter under Musk, along with his frankly mystifying takes on free speech and knee-jerk business decisions. What I am going to address is the slow death of Twitter, as someone who has been using it since pretty much day one.
My @happygeek account has been active since February 2007. One of the reasons I’ve stuck around for so long is my love of online communities. My first ventures into the online world revolved around FidoNet bulletin boards, Prestel/Micronet and CIX – all places to convene with like-minded souls. I mention this because Twitter has, for the longest time, been home to one of the biggest, most active and most important information
